Essay: Maeve Glattes
ESSAY: MAEVE GLATTES ANALYSIS OF SUBSTANCE ABUSE ON NATIVE AMERICAN RESERVATIONS When I first arrived on the reservation, my mouth dropped. I was overcome with beauty as I saw mountains all around me. I traveled to Browning, Montana, with my mom and two friends with a service group. With our mission to help anyone in need in the community that we were serving, the work allowed me to truly immerse myself in their culture. We worked on a farm owned by one of the pastors on the reservation. As he picked up countless phone calls, I heard and saw many hardships invading their community. One phone call, in particular, sparked an interest in me to comprehend where their battles were originating entirely. While the pastor was on the phone with a child, I heard a quiet and frightened voice of a child explaining to him that his mom was high on meth again and tried to kill their family dog. After the phone call ended, the pastor explained that phone calls related to substance abuse happen more often than we ever thought. While heartbroken, I immediately became intrigued about how and why many Native Americans fell captive to alcohol and drugs. What I saw and heard provoked a more profound question for my research, “How has substance abuse affected the nature of community throughout the Native American Reservations, and what is society doing to address the issue?” A Brief History of the Origin of Substance Abuse on Native American Reservations When reflecting on the effects of substance abuse on the Native American Reservations, it is essential to understand the origin of these issues thoroughly. Sources show that these chemical dependencies stem from historical trauma, unemployment and poverty, and low levels of education. In the 17th century, the race to conquer the “New World’’ began, and many European countries filled ships with colonists and sent them on a quest to conquer this new land. Some countries allied themselves with the Natives already living there, while others sought to steal their land. The Natives faced countless challenges as their land was taken over no matter their efforts. Disease challenged the very survival of the Indians from the beginning. As the Europeans flooded their land, they exposed the Natives to diseases their immune systems had never seen, causing horrific death. These illnesses decimated the Native Americans, wiping out nearly 90% of their population. While foreign disease posed a threat to the Native Americans, they also became vulnerable to the slave trade. Due to the wars between the European nations, Natives who sided with the losing army were commonly enslaved or indentured. Some Native Americans were shipped away from their homes in the United States to other places such as Canada. For decades, these separation tactics that weakened the Native American communities carried on (“Native Americans in Colonial America”).
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